@mattbutnot it almost feels like the fundamental hinayana/mahayana split is; hinayana deliberately conditions an individual for enlightenment, while mahayana virally conditions cultures to make enlightened individuals more likely.
@mattbutnot oh no not at all. That Always makes me cringe. I basically gloss over the philosophy and am interested in how buddhist ideas move memetically from through time and culture. Huayan/Avatamsatka is a very interesting example of that.
@mattbutnot But in the end, "everything that arises ceases". The buddha was an indian beggar, and I'm an ape with an ego.
@mattbutnot I like to push boundaries, play with ideas, and ferret out assumptions.
@mattbutnot I mean if extinction of self were the goal we could all just practice samadhi and hang out in the eighth jhana until starvation took it's course. The trick is how can samadhi be used as a tool for insight and non-reactive skillfull action when you operate in the phenomenal world.
RT @ternary_logic@twitter.com: When someone writes or says "Turn Prisons Into Colleges," I hear "The Ed Tech Industry and Pearson are hoping to to get in on all that mass incarceration money." We need to stop incarcerating people. https://twitter.com/bsonenstein/status/971377908530012160
"If for one minute you think you're better than a sixteen year old girl in a Green Day t-shirt, you are sorely mistaken. Remember the first time you went to a show and saw your favorite band. You wore their shirt, and sang every word. You didn't know anything about scene politics, haircuts, or what was cool. All you knew was that this music made you feel different from anyone you shared a locker with. Someone finally understood you. This is what music is about." -Gerard Way
Sketched up the outline of my next tattoo. A matched set.
@Thaddeus there's no right way. Don't be too hard on yourself.
IMPACT TEXT: get you a cauldron that can do both
[image 1 - a cauldron bubbling with unknown contents]
[image 2 - the same cauldron as image 1, shot from a different angle, bubbling with unknown contents]
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Kissing booth!
@mattbutnot in apology here is a talk that's pretty far removed in form and content. https://www.againstthestream.org/podcasts/the-visible-dharma/
@mattbutnot
Post Script
Now a productive manifestation of this agnosticism is, "What is Dukkha" and "Who is
liberated from Dukkha".
There is a fundamentally different answer to that in Mahayana, that I'm uncomfortable dismissing out of hand.
And thus I wanted to see what you--who seems to have a solid foot on the path heading towards one of the 84,000 gates in close proximity to where I'm aiming--thought.
Is Buddhism a mechanism for the reduction of personal suffering in one lifetime, or humanity as a whole?
@mattbutnot On the other hand that entire paragraph is dualistic. "I practice", "I belive", "I feel", "I agree". The Buddha is not my Buddha anymore than he was a Prince born from his mother's side, or Nagarjuna received the Pranjaparamita from Mucalinda. Theravada is but one of the Thirteen original schools, and today it's practitioners ignore the large chunks of the Vinaya.
It is skillful to remember that Zongmi in the 8th century was certain that China had perfected the Dharma, and to the vast majority of Buddhists in the world today what "I" practice is an anomalous curiosity. (3/3)
@mattbutnot In my personal practice I very much believe that Buddhism is about the management of mental states through the cultivation of enlightened viewpoints with the goal of reducing suffering. I feel that the Pali-cannon and associated texts like the Visuddhimagga give a clear process for cultivating the appropriate lifestyle for achieving this. I very much agree in what translators like Stephen Batchelor are trying to achieve when he, to paraphrase, "removes the superstructure of religious practice to find the foundation" in texts. (2/3?)
@mattbutnot So I hit and missed my mark. I wanted to see how you reacted to the Huayan school, but I didn't mean to offend you with such a sophmore level gloss. Unfortunately it's the best talk I could think of off the top of my head that got across the core focus of this school--which is a hugely influential precursor to Chan, Pure Land, and Lotus Sutra buddhism--in a manageable time period. (1/3?)
@mattbutnot Also this really needs a PM instead of spamming local
@mattbutnot Full discloser, I'm an Atheist Pali-Canon Western Theravada lay-Buddhist if I'm anything. (As I've taken no vows). Also I taking a while to put my thoughts in order.
@mattbutnot If your will fails you I can give you the cliff notes of the point I was making :P
@mattbutnot Is Buddhism what the Buddha said or what Buddhists believe? Cause the're a huge amount of devotional Buddhism in the world.